Of course, any birth year cutoff is arbitrary. (I’ve written more about that HERE and HERE). For example, maybe Millennials begin in 1979 or 1982 instead. That’s certainly possible – there is no bright dividing line between GenX’ers and Millennials. There are more definite breaks in the data between those born in the early 1990s and the mid-1990s, probably due to the smartphone, so the 1995 cutoff has some data to back it up. It’s too early to know what the end date will be – 2012 is just a rough guess.

It’s also inherently problematic to group people in 20-year blocks – someone born in 1980 had a different cultural experience from someone born in 1994. And if you were born in 1979 vs. 1980, are you really a different generation? In most studies, we’ve looked at birth year continuously, instead of grouping people into generations.

A generational label needs to capture something about the generation’s experience, and for iGen’ers, the Internet and smartphones have defined many of their experiences thus far – thus the name iGen, like iPhones and iPads. One survey found that 2 out of 3 teens has an iPhone (specifically an iPhone, not just a smartphone).

The prominent magazine AdvertisingAge backed iGen as the best name for the post-Millennials. “We think it’s the name that best fits and will best lead to understanding of this generation,” Matt Carmichael, AdvertisingAge’s director of data strategy, told USA Today.

Another name suggested for this group is Generation Z. But that label works only if the generation before them is called Generation Y, and hardly anyone uses Generation Y now that the term Millennials has won out. That makes Generation Z dead on arrival as a label. Plus, young people do not want to be named after the generation older than themselves. That’s why “Baby Busters” never caught on for Generation X and why “Generation Y” never stuck for Millennials. Generation Z is derivative, and the generational labels that stick are always original.

As far as I know, I was the first to use the term iGen, introducing it in the first edition of my book Generation Me in April 2006. I’ve been using the term iGen to refer to the post-Millennial generation for a while; in 2010 I named my speaking and consulting business iGen Consulting.

How is your approach different from that of other books, articles, and consulting firms on generations? Writter_01
2017-08-15T17:32:47+00:00

It’s easy to make a list of the events, pop culture, and economic swings each generation experienced. Boomers, for example, came of age during the turbulent 1960s, and iGen grew up in a world shaped by terrorism. But that doesn’t tell you much about who they really are. It’s more important to know how generations really differ in terms of personality traits, attitudes, and behavior, and what that means for organizations. That’s the approach I take, analyzing nationally representative survey data on 11 million people comparing the generations at the same age.

For example, my book iGen relies on four nationally representative U.S. surveys done over time: Monitoring the Future (8th, 10th, and 12th graders), the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (the CDC’s survey of 9th-12th graders), the American Freshman Survey (entering college students), and the General Social Survey (adults). Three of these studies have been conducted since the 1960s or 1970s, and the fourth since the early 1990s, allowing a view of generational and cultural differences that takes age out of the equation (because they examine people of the same age at different points in time).

A lot of polls, interviews, and surveys collect data at only one time. That means they can’t separate the effect of age from that of generation. If it’s age, the same thing that worked for young employees ten years ago will work just fine now – but if it’s generation, it won’t. That’s why the survey data across time is so powerful: It can eliminate the effect of age.

How is iGen different from the Millennials? Writter_01
2017-08-15T17:35:59+00:00

Around 2012, I started to see some sudden changes in the big national surveys – depressive symptoms and loneliness started to go up, and (after going up for 20 years) happiness started to go down. Other sources – like national screening studies on depression and statistics on teen suicides – showed the same pattern, with increases after 2010-12. I wondered what was going on, so I thought about what might possibly have caused these shifts. The Great Recession was officially over by 2010, and unemployment started to fall around 2011, so it seemed unlikely that the economy was to blame. This period didn’t see any cataclysmic events – and certainly none that kept accelerating over the next five years.

The original research I present in iGen finds that teens who spend more time on screens are less happy and more depressed (in a large, nationally representative sample of U.S. teens). For example, 8th graders who spend 10 or more hours a week on social media sites are 56% more likely to be unhappy than those who spend less time. The link holds when gender, race, and socioeconomic status is taken into account. But those analyses are correlational, so it is possible that unhappy or depressed teens spend more time on screens.

Also: Depression causing social media use doesn’t explain why depression would increase so suddenly after 2011-12. In that model, something else would have to cause teen depression to rise so sharply, which would then lead to more smartphone and social media use. It seems much more likely that smartphone and social media use increased, and depression and unhappiness followed.

I’m a manager. How do I work with Millennials and iGen? Writter_01
2017-08-15T17:38:05+00:00

The first step is to understand how these generations are different from previous ones – and how they aren’t. Many generational consultants will make statements about generational differences, but look carefully at their materials: How did they arrive at these conclusions? Saying Millennials experienced certain events, and thus have certain characteristics, is not data – it’s a wild guess. It’s also not enough to rely a poll taken on just one occasion – because then any differences could be due to age or generation, and it’s impossible to separate the two. Ideally, we should be comparing the generations at the same age, so we know that things have really changed. In this era of evidence-based management, managers need actual data on how the generations differ.

There’s also a chapter on work attitudes in iGen [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1501151983/], detailing how they are different from Millennials and how best to manage them. If you’re interested in learning more about how your business can draw on these data – and, even more important – how to apply them to better recruit, retain, and manage this generation, click here [link to speaking page] for information about speaking engagements or here [link to consulting page] for information about personalized consulting on how generational differences impact marketing and advertising to Millennials and iGen.

Doesn’t this research stereotype Millennials and iGen? Writter_01
2017-08-15T17:38:49+00:00

No, because it uses data from young people themselves. These studies compare young people’s views and behaviors to the views and behaviors of young people from previous generations. Of course, like any scientific study, these are average differences, so there are certainly exceptions. People from Minnesota (where I spent my childhood) are different from people from Texas (where I spent my adolescence), but there’s plenty of individual variation. Generations work the same way. There’s more on that here [https://theconversation.com/how-do-we-know-the-millennial-generation-exists-look-at-the-data-77768].

One other note: The trends reported in iGen are based on nationally representative samples, so they capture the experience of the typical teen. The generational trends are very consistent across race, gender, socioeconomic status, and region of the country, with just a few exceptions (for example, the mental health trends are larger among girls).

Maybe, but that observation isn’t particularly relevant for this data, which examines what young people say about themselves. I completely agree that older folks’ observations are not a useful source of data about generational differences. That’s why the studies rely on the voices of the generation itself. This question also seems to assume that an argument which has been made before must be wrong. That seems nonsensical at best. Instead, it makes sense to listen to what young people have to say, and to find out how that’s different from what they said 10, 20, or 30 years ago.

Related to this is “people have always worried about the effects of new technology – they said the same thing about novels, TV, etc.” Again, just because it’s been said before doesn’t make it wrong. For example, people were probably right to worry about TV: It’s also correlated with depression, and political scientist Robert Putnam concluded in his book Bowling Alone that TV was the primary reason community groups and social capital declined after 1950.

As for novels, we don’t have data to determine if they had negative effects when they were introduced. But among today’s teens, those who read books, magazines, and newspapers are happier than those who don’t. Thus, this observation isn’t particularly relevant to today’s teens.

Why did you call your book about Millennials Generation Me? Writter_01
2017-08-15T17:40:36+00:00

Millennials have been shaped by the growth of cultural individualism – more focus on the self and less on social rules. Individualism explains nearly all of the Millennial generation’s distinguishing characteristics, from their support of equality to their positive self-views. Millennials are also focused on standing out, feeling unique, and having high expectations for themselves. With iGen less confident, Millennials represent the apex of the individualistic idea that you should always feel good about yourself. iGen has continued individualistic trends toward supporting equality, with iGen and the Millennials really standing out from previous generations in their support for LGBT issues.

In short, generations exist because cultures change. Just as Japan has a different culture from the U.S., the culture of the 1950s was different from the culture of the 2010s. As cultures change, younger people – who have never known another world – take certain attitudes and worldviews for granted. For example, most Americans now These specific changes often stem from broad, pervasive forces in the culture.

Another cultural force is technology. For example, iGen has been shaped by their adolescence spent on smartphones. A generational shift appeared around 2011-2012 among teens, likely because smartphones became pervasive around that time.

Last, families are smaller and lives are longer, leading to more people pursuing what is known as a slow life strategy [https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/darwins-subterranean-world/201504/life-in-the-slow-lane]. Teens who pursue a slow life strategy, for example, will be less likely to engage in adult activities such as driving, working, dating, drinking alcohol, having sex, and going out without their parents. Some of these trends are good, some are neutral, and some might be bad – but all involve growing up more slowly. The theory behind slow life strategies (life history theory) explicitly notes that slow (or fast) strategies are not bad or good – they are an adaptation to a cultural context [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22122473].

So, although generational labels are not always precise, it is very clear that cultures change over time, and that those changes have an effect on people. That, at base, is why generational differences exist.